Introducing Personas and Scenarios to Highlight Older Adults' Perspectives on Robot-Mediated Communication

Little is known about the expectations of older adults (60+ years old) in robot-mediated communication when leaving aside care-related activities. To bridge this gap, we carried out 30 semi-structured interviews with older adults to explore their experiences and expectations related to technology-mediated communication. We present the results of the collected data through personas that portray three archetype users, Conny Connected, Stephan Skeptical, and Thomas TechFan. These personas are presented in a specific communication scenario with individual goals that go beyond mere communication, such as the desire for closeness (Conny Connected), a problem-free experience (Stephan Skeptical), and exploring affordances of telepresence robots (Thomas Tech-Fan). Also, we provide two considerations when aiming at positive experiences for older adults with robots: balance generalizable aspects and individual needs and identify and challenge preconceptions of telepresence robots.